Climate emergency: an open letter to concerned global citizens

"In our complex, interdependent global ecosystem, life is dying, with species extinction accelerating. The climate crisis is worsening much faster than previously predicted. Every single day 200 species are becoming extinct. This desperate situation can’t continue.
Political leaders worldwide are failing to address the environmental crisis. If global corporate capitalism continues to drive the international economy, global catastrophe is inevitable. Complacency and inaction in Britain, USA, Australia, Brazil, across Africa and Asia – all illustrate diverse manifestations of political paralysis, abdicating humankind’s grave responsibility for planetary stewardship.

International political organizations and national governments must foreground the climate-emergency issue immediately, urgently drawing up comprehensive policies to address it. Conventionally privileged nations must voluntarily fund comprehensive environment-protection policies in impoverished nations, to compensate the latter for foregoing unsustainable economic growth, and paying recompense for the planet-plundering imperialism of materially privileged nations.
With extreme weather already hitting food production, we demand that governments act now to avoid any risk of hunger, with emergency investment in agroecological extreme-weather-resistant food production. We also call for an urgent summit on saving the Arctic icecap, to slow weather disruption of our harvests.

We further call on concerned global citizens to rise up and organise against current complacency in their particular contexts, including indigenous people’s rights advocacy, decolonization and reparatory justice – so joining the global movement that’s now rebelling against extinction.
We must collectively do whatever’s necessary non-violently, to persuade politicians and business leaders to relinquish their complacency and denial. Their “business as usual” is no longer an option. Global citizens will no longer put up with this failure of our planetary duty.
Every one of us, especially in the materially privileged world, must commit to accepting the need to live more lightly, consume far less, and to not only uphold human rights but also our stewardship responsibilities to the Planet".
Signed by: Vandana Shiva, Naomi Klein, Noam Chomsky, Anthony Clifford Grayling, Philip Pullman, Rowan Williams, Bill McKibben, Tiokasin Ghosthorse, Esther Stanford-Xosei, Jonathan Porritt, Alison Green, Lily Cole Model, Chris Packham, Susie Orbach, Joy Carter, Jayati Ghosh.

Why an open letter for the climate

The open letter signed by over 100 eminent people from around the globe, including Navdanya International President Vandana Shiva, is the message the civil society is sending to the governments failing to address one of the most pressing emergencies of our time. In doing so, they protect their economic interests to the detriment of those of humanity.